


Roses Are Red in Her Red-Gold Hair

by Chronicler



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Because Here Be Dragons, Butch/Femme, Canon Divergence, Chivalry, F/F, Knights And Maidens, LGBTQ Character, LGBTQ Female Character, Lesbian Relationship, Pay Heed That I Chose Not To Use Warnings, Queer Themes, Romance, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-09
Updated: 2018-08-09
Packaged: 2019-06-22 02:09:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 562
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15571389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chronicler/pseuds/Chronicler
Summary: The battle between the living and the dead sweeps Westeros, leaving behind only blood and ice. However, all newly knighted Brienne of Tarth really wants is to protect Sansa Stark: her Lady. Brienne is, after all, Sansa's Sworn Sword. If only life were that simple, and if only duty allowed one to follow one's heart.





	Roses Are Red in Her Red-Gold Hair

**Author's Note:**

> The painting is The Accolade by Edmund Leighton. The scene in The Red Woman between Sansa and Brienne reminds me so much of it.
> 
> The title and verse are from The Dole of the King’s Daughter by Oscar Wilde: https://www.bartleby.com/143/40.html
> 
> Thank you to Matty for beta reading.
> 
> Feedback gratefully received.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Red roses are at her feet,  
  (Roses are red in her red-gold hair)  
And O where her bosom and girdle meet  
  Red roses are hidden there.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

 

Brienne had always known it would end like this. Alone, staring down a hill at an approaching hoard. White walkers, people call them, but they look blue in the fading light glinting off their skeletal figures; decrepit yet unstoppable: nothing left to lose.

‘They need you at the front –’ Sansa had said, soft and pink as petals, hair copper as fire.

‘But I swore –’ Brienne had tried to interrupt.

And Sansa had rolled her pretty blue eyes, cornflower blue, said: ‘I know, I know: “ _I swore a sacred solemn oath – by the Old Gods and the New – to your mother to protect you,”_   just like in stories. And you shall: but first we must prove to Cersei, to Lyanna, that we are committed to fighting by their side. But –’ and she had stepped close, long diaphanous silks of her dress rustling, placed her palms against the rough brocade of Brienne’s tunic. ‘ _Promise_ me you’ll be careful, and come back to me?’

Hands balled into fists, Brienne had stood to attention, looked down at her. Everything was still so new, and Sansa so delicate, so wounded under her porcelain composure. Brienne so achingly aware of being drab and colourless, all solid angles against slender curves.

The ephemeral moment had stretched too long and Sansa’s look hardened, hands grasping, till Brienne pulled her close. Tasted lips as tender as they looked, but that had their own determination, had not been crushed like a flower.

There would be more time, Brienne had told herself when she rode away with the other soldiers, air filled with the blunt clomping of hooves on hard ground as the castle disappeared behind them. More time for everything. To learn to bend and not break.

‘I always think each battle’s my last,’ The Hound had said, grunted really, as the world froze around them, prickling their fingertips, heaps of corpses crackling as they rose. ‘Always surprised to be the last one standing. But if one more cunt says _winter is coming_ , I’ll have their tongue.’

He fell too, they all did, the whole world a battlefield, from the Narrow to the Sunset Sea.

Till Brienne hacked her way back to the frozen wasteland that the North had become. Flooded red under ice. An endless trudge through snow on her fruitless quest.

‘The Queen of the North protected us till her final breath – a true Stark,’ the few voices left behind echoed. A future legend to whatever survives: Sansa would have liked that.

Far overhead, the too-solid ghost of a dragon slithers and shimmers through clouds like water, air turning to crystals in the white fire of its breath.

Brienne can’t remember the last words she’d spoken before she left Winterfell, surrounded as they were by squires and servants. ‘I loved you before I ever met you,’ she likes to imagine, but knows more likely, ‘Keep the grain supplies plentiful.’

Still, she squares her shoulders under her battered and bloodied armour: she, Brienne of Tarth, had been a knight. With a Lady to guard with her life – even if, in the end, she had failed.

Valyrian steel shrieks out from its scabbard as she draws her sword, then, with a roar, she charges.

 

** _The End_ **

 


End file.
